Gas turbines are typically large, complex, and expensive machines that operate under challenging environmental conditions. Building, maintaining, and operating these machines often requires a significant capital investment, and therefore, steps are often taken to ramp-up and ramp-down the turbines under careful control, in order to protect the capital investment, and operate the turbine within safe limits.
When a turbine is being ramped-up and brought on-line, certain parameters such as exhaust temperature, power output, airflow, and fuel flow, for example, can be measured to provide feedback for stabilizing the turbine. Such measured parameters may also be used to detect anomalous behavior or dangerous operating conditions that may require corrective action to avoid a costly malfunction. In many cases, the delay or lag time between the turbine operational variables and the associated measurable parameters may be too long to reliably and/or effectively act upon.